Experimental evaluation of air-termination systems for wind turbine blades

• In this paper, the air-termination systems for wind turbine blades are evaluated experimentally.
• Based on the comparison between these systems, a proposed air-termination system is developed.
• The results show that the proposed system attains higher lightning protection efficiency.

In this paper, air-termination systems for wind turbine blades reported in IEC-61400-24 standard are evaluated experimentally. These systems are such as receptor, metallic mesh and metallic conductor on the blade edges. In addition to these systems, metallic cap on the blade tip is investigated. The lightning attachment manner to the wind turbine blade is studied under positive and negative impulse voltages and for polluted and unpolluted blade surfaces. As the blades are rotating, the experiments are conducted considering five positions with different angels. The protection evaluation is done using 2 m blade tip section that is a part of 19.1 m actual blade length of 600 kW wind turbine. According to the comparison between the above systems, a proposed air-termination system is developed and experimentally examined. The results show that the proposed system attains higher lightning protection efficiency. The tests are carried out using a designed blade tip section with applying standard lightning impulse voltages.

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